Record

Hearing

1951-02-22

U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, via Internet Archive

Kefauver Part 1-A: testimony of J. Rex Farrior, Hillsborough County state's attorney, on Charles Wall (22 February 1951)

Committee counsel asks the state's attorney about the unsolved shootings at Charles Wall; Farrior says officers found no clue and gives his own characterization of Wall as 'self-confessed and public recorded head and brains of the underworld.' Pp. 413-415.

Date: 1951-02-22
Kind: hearing
Source: U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, via Internet Archive
Retrieved: 2026-10-12
Rights: A hearing print of the United States Senate, published by the Government Printing Office. A work of the United States Congress, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The Internet Archive item marks it not in copyright.

J. Rex Farrior, state’s attorney for Hillsborough County, testified in Washington on 22 February 1951 (pp. 395-457 of Part 1-A). At pp. 413-415 counsel asked whether he had called Charlie Wall before the grand jury about the shootings at him in 1930, 1939 and 1944, as counsel stated them. Farrior said officers had made a public report finding no clue and no witnesses.

Farrior said that every murder in Tampa history except two (Velasco and Lumia) happened during the time when Wall “was a recognized and admitted” and “self-confessed and public recorded head and brains of the underworld.” The characterization is the state’s attorney’s own opinion in testimony. It is not a finding of the committee. Wall’s own testimony, taken in Tampa on 29 December 1950, gives different recollections of the shootings and names no organization.

itemKefauver Committee hearings, Part 1A: Florida (1950–1951)Printed hearings of the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, Part 1A, Florida: sessions in Washington and Tampa, November 1950 to February 1951.itemKefauver Part 1-A: testimony of Charles M. Wall, Tampa (29 December 1950)Wall, accompanied by attorney Pat Whitaker, describes his gambling background and says he left gambling in Hillsborough County in late 1939 or 1940; counsel calls him an elder statesman of Tampa gambling. Printed pages 60-71.itemKefauver Part 1-A: testimony of M. C. Beasley, Tampa chief of police (29 December 1950)Counsel questions the police chief about police files on unsolved Tampa killings of 1936-1939 and on the attempts on the life of Charles Wall; pp. 80-89, with the main passages at pp. 84-85. Exhibit 7 holds the records he brought.